Project Fairy, page 1
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
My Fairy Project by Mab Macclesfield
About the Author
Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was nine years old, and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of Britain’s bestselling and most beloved children’s authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than forty million copies of her books have been sold.
As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children’s Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children’s Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame.
Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings.
Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was nine years old, and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of Britain’s bestselling and most beloved children’s authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than forty million copies of her books have been sold.
As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children’s Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children’s Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame.
Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings.
Find out more about Jacqueline and her books at www.jacquelinewilson.co.uk
For Trish
Bindweed is the bane of her life
You’ll never guess what my mum gave me for a birthday present. She came into my bedroom carrying breakfast on a tray, with my little brother Robin singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the top of his voice. It was a special treat breakfast – orange juice and toast with strawberry jam cut into heart shapes. It’s a Mum thing. She handed me the pink tissue parcel so eagerly, her eyes shining.
I felt the paper carefully. There was something soft folded up inside. Clothes.
I hadn’t really wanted clothes. I’d wanted an electric scooter most of all, but a bike or skateboard would have been fine as well. They probably cost too much even second-hand, so then I’d have liked one of those giant sets of felt-tip pens and a sketch pad. I didn’t want a special colouring book because I prefer making up my own pictures. I like drawing outer space and jungles and wild animals.
If I had to have clothes, then I wanted a really cool T-shirt, maybe black with a gorilla on it. Or a skeleton, or a grinning face, or a cartoon character. I felt very anxious about Mum’s choice. She’s very much a pink person. She once bought me a candyfloss-pink T-shirt with Mummy’s Girl written on it in fancy white lettering. I nearly died.
I slipped my hand inside the tissue. It didn’t feel like a T-shirt. There was a smooth silky bit and then something like net, all puffed up. I felt sick. It seemed to be a party frock. It was totally the wrong sort of present for me. I didn’t go to any parties for a start. Nobody invites me now.
I don’t care. Well, I suppose I do a bit, but I actually hate parties, especially the sort where you dress up in your best clothes. A party dress would be my worst-ever outfit.
Maybe Mum thought I didn’t go to parties because I didn’t have a proper dress. I tried hard to get my face into a happy, thrilled expression. I didn’t want to hurt her.
‘Ooh, I think I’ve guessed what it is!’ I said, trying to make my voice sound pleased.
Mum smiled at me.
‘What is it, what is it, what is it?’ Robin asked, jumping up and down eagerly on my bed.
I took a deep breath and ripped open the pink tissue. A dress fell out. Not a party dress. It was far far worse. It was a fairy frock. It had a pale pink silky bodice attached to a froth of deep pink net, six layers of it, so it stuck out in all directions. And there were wings attached to the back of the bodice, floppy feathery wings.
Perhaps some girls might long for such a dress. Maybe very little girls. But I thought this fairy outfit the most startlingly horrible garment I’d ever seen. I was so taken aback I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I just froze, my mouth open.
Robin was impressed. ‘Oh, Mum, it’s a fairy dress! With wings! You’ll be able to fly now, Mab!’
He wasn’t teasing. He seriously seemed to think I could spread those false wings and fly out of the window.
‘Mab will be able to fly in her dreams,’ said Mum, clasping her hands. ‘You do like it, don’t you, darling?’
I swallowed. ‘It’s … lovely,’ I said, straining to sound convincing. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I was looking up fairy dust online, wanting to order some more for your birthday,’ said Mum. (Fairy dust is this sparkly sequin stuff that Mum sprinkles everywhere on special occasions. She puts it in birthday cards and Christmas cards too so you have to open them very carefully – and even then you get fairy dust flying everywhere and you discover the odd sequin about your person for days afterwards.) ‘Then I noticed that Google was asking if I wanted to look up fairy dress and so I did, and I immediately knew I had to buy you one for your birthday! I did wonder if I should ask you first, because I know you mostly like your jeans and T-shirts, but who wouldn’t want their own actual fairy dress?’ said Mum.
I wouldn’t! I screamed inside, but I grinned valiantly.
I hate upsetting Mum. It’s so easy to make her cry. She was very ill after Dad walked out when Robin was a toddler – only two and a half! She was in hospital for quite a while and Robin and I had to go into care. For a whole year! We had a very kind foster mum but she wasn’t our mum. We minded terribly. I was already missing my dad but I missed Mum even more.
She got better and finally, after we’d had lots of visits and some weekends with Mum, our social worker said we could go and live with her again. That was last summer, more than a year ago now. We moved right away for a fresh start. Mum got a job in a supermarket, so we get discount food, and our new flat doesn’t cost much because it’s social housing. I had to start at a new school. It was OK at first because I made friends with Billie, but then she palled up with Cathy and Anita at the end of last term and now they are my deadly enemies. It’s horrible, but the only thing that really matters is that Robin and I are back together with Mum.
She’s mostly fine now, but she still gets upset easily. She cries at the silliest things, even happy things like those cute kitten clips on YouTube. And she gets obsessed with stuff. She watches television a lot. She loves Escape to the Country and checks out every house as if she’s considering it for us, even though we couldn’t possibly afford it and she’s terrified of cows anyway. Her favourite programme in all the world is Strictly Come Dancing. She’s learned how to do the old-fashioned waltz and whirls Robin or me round and round our little living room until we get dizzy.
She loves making scrapbooks and photo albums, and taught herself to write in fancy italic writing using silver and gold pens. She even writes notes to my teacher like that to tell her I’ve got a dental appointment.
Then over the last eighteen months she’s got more and more into fairies. She’s always been a fairy follower, ever since she was a little girl. I think she actually believes in them. She makes weeny fairy furniture, little cotton-reel things with tiny cushions and plaster tables in the shape of toadstools. She sprinkles hundreds and thousands, those tiny rainbow-coloured sweets, on top of the tables. In the morning they’re all gone.
‘Oh-oh! The fairies had a feast last night!’ she says. It’s obviously for Robin’s benefit, not mine. Though I suppose I used to half believe it when I was his age.
Mum’s tried making her own fairies with pipe cleaners and scraps of silk ribbon. She took all the fairy stuff to craft fairs at weekends for a while, but hardly anyone ever bought them. She makes fairy potions too, and special fairy soap with little rosebuds that come off in the bath. Our flat always smells sickly. She buys all the films she can find that have got fairies in them. We have fairy lights all over the flat, even in the toilet.
Robin and I have even got fairy names. There’s some fairy character called Robin Goodfellow in a play. He’s meant to be very mischievous and plays tricks on people. Our Robin can be mischievous and play tricks, but not in a bad way. He really is a good fellow. I’m called Mab. People always think it’s short for something, maybe Mabel. No, it’s just Mab, after another fairy who was a queen. Still, I suppose it could have been worse. Mum could have chosen another fairy queen – Titania. You can guess what the kids at school would have called me then.
School! Even thinking the word makes my heart start thudding. Home-schooled children are the luckiest kids ever. I hate school. I especially hate Cathy and Anita. They have turned Billie against me. They have a club called the ABCs. The club seems to have only one rule – be as mean and spiteful and mocking as you can to Mab Macclesfield.
I don’t mind my teacher. Mrs Horsley’s really kind. She’s always trying to make lessons fun, and she reads to us at the end of every day and lets us have a dance in the hall when it’s a wet lunchtime. She bakes cookies for us and brings in halwa for Diwali, and dr
Oh no! I thought, I told Mum this. I hurriedly dressed in my white blouse and grey skirt before she remembered. I almost got away with it, but when we were going out the door Mum suddenly clapped the palm of her hand to her forehead.
‘I’ve just remembered! You can wear whatever you like today, Mab, because it’s your birthday!’ she said.
I thought frantically. ‘Oh yes, that old rule. But Mrs Horsley’s changed her mind. Cathy came to school in a tiny top and shorts a bit like knickers and Mrs Horsley said they were inappropriate, so now none of us are allowed to wear birthday clothes,’ I said. I was very proud of myself, especially for using such a grown-up word as inappropriate. And Cathy did wear that top and shorts, and even the big girls in the top year don’t wear clothes like that.
‘But Micky in your class wore really cool rapper clothes last week, with sunglasses and a baseball hat!’ said Robin. He’d seen him when we went to school and had been very impressed.
‘Shut up, Robin!’ I muttered, but Mum had heard. It wasn’t Robin’s fault – he was only trying to be helpful. He probably thought I was longing to wear my fairy dress to school.
‘There you are then, Mab! I’m sure Mrs Horsley wouldn’t mind now. And you’ll be the envy of all your friends, wearing a fairy costume,’ said Mum.
I didn’t have any friends. Perhaps Robin’s little friends in Reception might be envious, but my class would fall about laughing.
‘There isn’t really time to change into my lovely fairy dress now,’ I said quickly. ‘And I don’t want to risk getting it messed up at school. But I’ll wear it all day long on Saturday and Sunday.’
The light had gone out of Mum’s eyes. I hadn’t been convincing enough. ‘You don’t have to wear it at all, darling, not if you don’t like it,’ she said.
‘I do! I absolutely love it! OK, I’ll go and put it on,’ I said, unable to help it.
I ran upstairs, pulled off my uniform and wriggled into the fairy dress. Then I took a deep breath and looked in the mirror. It was even worse than I’d thought. It was exactly the right size but still looked totally wrong on me. I don’t suit pink for a start. I have pale skin and pink just makes me look plain. I have plain hair too, long and limp and mousy. I’m bony and I bite my nails. I am so not a fairy sort of girl.
The dress hung on me, the net skirts scratching my legs. It stuck up at the front, because the weight of the wings dragged it down at the back. My scruffy socks and trainers didn’t help. I looked a total ninny.
I grabbed a T-shirt and shorts, stuffed them into the pocket of my big raincoat, and ran downstairs.
‘Let’s see!’ said Mum. ‘Oh, darling, you look lovely! Look at your new fairy sister, Robin!’
‘You’re so pretty!’ said Robin, clapping his hands.
They weren’t teasing – they really meant it. Sometimes I think Mum and Robin come from another planet altogether.
I held my net skirts out and gave them a little twirl, and then quickly pulled on my raincoat.
‘I don’t think it’s going to rain today,’ said Mum doubtfully.
‘I know. But I want to keep covered up on the way to school so then I can give everyone a surprise when I take it off in the cloakroom,’ I said.
‘Oh, I get you now,’ said Mum. ‘Good thinking!’
So we set off schoolwards on my birthday morning, Mum in her maroon shop overall, Robin in his tiny school uniform, and me bundled up in my raincoat, still with at least ten centimetres of shocking pink net showing below the hem.
We walked to school, Mum and Robin and me. Robin insisted on grabbing our hands and swinging himself backwards and forwards, while singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me over and over again. Naturally, people stared, especially at me, the girl wearing a raincoat on a bright sunny day with weird pink netting poking out underneath. Still, there were hardly any other mums and kids about. We always arrived early so that Mum could drop us off by twenty past eight, in time for her shift at the supermarket.
There were a cluster of little Breakfast Club kids at the gate to the Infants, but they didn’t bother to give me a second glance. Several waved at Robin and one small girl actually ran up to him and gave him a smacking kiss on his cheek.
‘Robin! Robin! Robin!’ she yelled enthusiastically, as if she hadn’t seen him for months. She grinned at him. ‘He’s my boyfriend,’ she told her mum proudly.
‘No, he’s my boyfriend,’ said a tiny red-haired boy, glaring.
‘I can be your boyfriend and your boyfriend,’ said Robin. ‘Bye, Mum. Bye, Mab. Happy Birthday!’
He let go of our hands, grabbed two of his friends’ hands instead, and ran into school with them.
‘Bless!’ said Mum. She turned to me. ‘Have a lovely day, darling. Here, birthday treat!’ She handed me a chocolate bar.
‘Oh, Mum!’
‘Shove it in your pocket quick before anyone sees!’ said Mum.
Our school is very keen on healthy eating, and the children who take packed lunches are inspected by the Food Police dinner ladies every day. (I have school lunches because I get them free, as Mum doesn’t have much money.) It was seriously against the rules to smuggle chocolate into school, but I was good at finding a quiet corner by myself.
‘I love you, Mum,’ I said, hugging her.
‘I love you too, darling,’ she said. ‘And it’ll be birthday tea this afternoon. With a birthday cake. Promise. Are you sure you don’t want to invite any of your friends?’
She kept up this myth that I was as popular as my little brother even though she knew I wasn’t, and I knew I wasn’t, and she knew I knew. I gave her a big kiss.
‘Thank you for my lovely fairy dress,’ I said.
‘You look a real little Queen Mab,’ Mum said. ‘Have a great day, darling.’
I skipped across the playground because I knew she was watching me, and then scooted into school, making a beeline for the cloakrooms. Micky (rapper boy, but in ordinary school uniform today) was swinging acrobatically along the coat hooks.
‘You’ll catch it if a teacher comes past,’ I said.
‘As if I care,’ said Micky. At least the boys in my class still talked to me. The girls were all under Cathy’s influence and ignored me completely, apart from holding their noses. At that precise moment the coat hook he was currently holding came right out of the plaster wall. Micky ended up on his bottom, gazing at the hook in his hand in surprise.
He said a very rude word. Then he looked up and saw the white plastery hole in the dark green wall. He said another even ruder word and looked at me.
‘Are you going to tell on me?’ he demanded.
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I’m not a snitch.’
‘Yeah, right,’ he said challengingly, but he knew I wouldn’t. He stood up shakily and felt the small of his back. ‘Doesn’t half hurt,’ he said.
‘Rub it,’ I suggested.
He tried.
‘Does that help?’ I asked.
‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Perhaps you should go and see Mrs Black?’ I suggested. Mrs Black was the school secretary. She had a first aid certificate so you went to her if you had a headache or felt sick or had a nosebleed.
‘Nah, can’t be bothered,’ said Micky. He was still looking at me. ‘What’s that you’re wearing?’
‘A raincoat,’ I said, my heart thudding.
‘Not the coat thing. What have you got on underneath? The pink stuff?’ He pointed at the net of my fairy dress.
‘Oh, that?’ I said. ‘It’s my ballet frock. I go to ballet classes and I’m in this show and we had an early rehearsal because we’re doing the show this Saturday. I get to do a solo dance, with lots of those twirly around things. Pirouettes.’
‘Yuck,’ said Micky, screwing up his face, but he obviously believed me. I was clearly a gold-star liar.
‘You’d be good at ballet,’ I said.
